After all the rumors of the sixth Harry Potter film being directed by someone with track record, or even a returning Chris Columbus, SlashFilm is reporting that Michael Hoffman is in final talks to become the director of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. For who that don't know him by name (which is probably the majority of you out there), he is the guy who directed Kevin Kline in The Emperor's Club and A Midsummer Night's Dream. He also made some other films that weren't that interesting, at least the imaginative sort of way that is needed for the Potter series.

This is some pretty disappointing news. I don't care if Hoffman is a former Rhodes Scholar or that he's directed Shakespeare (with Calista Flockhart, mind you) -- he just doesn't seem appropriate. Let's recap the rumored contenders to see what might have been better, shall we? In March, Alfonso Cuaron said he could be interested in doing another Potter. In May, there was an idea that Terry Gilliam might get the gig. In July, there was mention of M. Night Shyamalan, which would be interesting to see, but horrible to accept. I even heard somewhere that Columbus might be back. As for the current IMDb listing, David Yates is credited to stick around after Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

The thing is, it might not matter too much who the director of #6 is since some of the original players may be gone by the time someone is hired. And who could blame them when Warners is pulling out names like Michael Hoffman? I imagine being one of the Potter kids is like having a new stepfather every other year. And the latest one is into faeries.

The ever-reliable Production Weekly reported last night that Anthony Hopkins, Meryl Streep, and Paul Giamatti have signed on to star in The Last Station, a pretty awesome-sounding (and when I say "awesome-sounding," I mean "something that giant nerds of Russian history like me will freaking love") movie based on a novel by Jay Parini. Parini's book tells the story of the last year of Russian author Leo Tolstoy's life, and is based in part on Tolstoy's own diaries, which detailed his desperate inner struggle between his opulent lifestyle (demanded by his wife, who will be played by Streep) and his personal "philosophy of poverty." In the book, a dying Tolstoy (as if you had to ask, that's Hopkins) finally flees his wife, home, and supporters (the most prominent of which will be played by Giamatti) and ends up in "a humble station-master's house," where he tries to find some internal peace. While there, "he believes that he is dying alone, while over one hundred newspapermen camp outside awaiting hourly reports on his condition." Wow.

Ok, I realize that 95% of you have fallen asleep already just reading that summary, but it seriously gives me chills. This movie sounds tailor-made for those of us who dig both all things Russian and old-school, internal Merchant Ivory-type stories (I'm think mostly of Howards End here). Under the direction of Michael Hoffman (who also helmed Soapdish and Restoration, an interesting pair), the movie will start shooting in Russian next February. Where it will be very, very cold.

• Bloodrayne - Teutonic terror Uwe Boll directs movies no more than gravity directs objects to Earth. His grasp of pithy things like story and character development is nearly non-existent, and his penchant for adapting video games has earned him a reputation as a sort of idiot savant (only without the savant part), kind of like if the kid on the porch in Deliverance only knew how to play the riff that Vanilla Ice nicked from Queen's "Under Pressure". His latest, a shameless Blade ripoff about a half-human, half-vampire avenger (Kristianna Loken), is miscast, barely written and staged with the skill of a spastic with cataracts. Currently residing on the IMDB's Bottom 100 (at #34), it and Boll's rotting body of work have elevated the oeuvre of Ed Wood, whose non-charting Plan 9 From Outer Space was once considered the worst film ever made, to common hack status. At least the inclusion of the free PC version of the Bloodrayne 2 video game will help soothe buyer remorse.